Why Kanban is, Wrongfully, Perceived as a Waterfall Variant

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague about handover points that teams have in their processes and how to decrease them. He was explaining how to approach this problem in the Agile (Scrum) context; by allowing teams self organize around the work that needs to be done and having T-shaped team members, thus, avoiding silo culture. This was not the interesting part of the conversation.

What made this conversation interesting was, he actually wanted to know why Kanban did not care about silo culture; on the contrary, encouraged it. I was a bit shocked but none the less went along with it. I knew his question was sincere and I knew he was in a discussion on this topic with other Agile enthusiasts/evangelists in the work place.

So I asked “Why would you think that Kanban encourages silo culture?” …

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